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diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
I'm struggling to get good battery life on my iphone 5. It's much worse than my previous iPhone 4. I switched from AT&T to Sprint. Even when I'm in an area where I get a good signal, it doesn't change the CPU usage.

Battery life: I had 3 hrs of light usage (6 hrs of stand by) from a full, overnight charge with 10% battery life remaining. I've cycled through the battery two times hoping it might calibrate it. I new it was terrible so I have started troubleshooting the problem.

I downloaded sysstatslite from the app store to monitor the CPU %used and %idle. My phone CPU is running at 80-90% used almost all the time. If I put it in airplane mode it will drop down to 2-3%. I've closed every app in the dock thinking it might be some sort of background task running but it didn't affect it. I've attached the screenshots of the apps. I'd be curious to see what everyone else is getting on there CPU used and if they have good or bad battery life. My next step is to restore everything to factory default and instead of restoring from a backup, start over new again.
 

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SR71

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2011
1,602
365
Boston, MA
I'm struggling to get good battery life on my iphone 5. It's much worse than my previous iPhone 4. I switched from AT&T to Sprint. Even when I'm in an area where I get a good signal, it doesn't change the CPU usage.

Battery life: I had 3 hrs of light usage (6 hrs of stand by) from a full, overnight charge with 10% battery life remaining. I've cycled through the battery two times hoping it might calibrate it. I new it was terrible so I have started troubleshooting the problem.

I downloaded sysstatslite from the app store to monitor the CPU %used and %idle. My phone CPU is running at 80-90% used almost all the time. If I put it in airplane mode it will drop down to 2-3%. I've closed every app in the dock thinking it might be some sort of background task running but it didn't affect it. I've attached the screenshots of the apps. I'd be curious to see what everyone else is getting on there CPU used and if they have good or bad battery life. My next step is to restore everything to factory default and instead of restoring from a backup, start over new again.

Please post back with your results. I'd love to see what you come up with.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
Please post back with your results. I'd love to see what you come up with.

I will. I'm actually downloading xcode tonight because I guess with Instruments 2 you can look at all the processes running and what percentage of CPU is used. I think it's the only way to view that sort of info without the phone being jailbroken.

Today held up a little better. I got 4 hrs of usage, 10 hrs of standby time.
 

SR71

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2011
1,602
365
Boston, MA
I will. I'm actually downloading xcode tonight because I guess with Instruments 2 you can look at all the processes running and what percentage of CPU is used. I think it's the only way to view that sort of info without the phone being jailbroken.

Today held up a little better. I got 4 hrs of usage, 10 hrs of standby time.

Mine was getting bad battery life the first couple days, but I left it on the charger for almost 12 hours last night and it's done VERY well so far today. About to hit 4 hours of usage and 8.5 hours of usage and still have 54% left. And I haven't listened to any music today. That's just straight texting, phone calls, browsing the web, twitter, facebook, etc. I've done 2 full power cycles in the time I've had this phone (from 100% battery to 0%) and still could only manage 9 hours of standby and 3-4 hours of usage, so the fact that I'm already at almost 8.5 hours of usage with 4 hours of standby and still have 54% battery left is awesome.

If this battery life keeps up throughout the week, I'm gonna love this phone.

Good luck finding out the issue! Very interesting topic.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
Mine was getting bad battery life the first couple days, but I left it on the charger for almost 12 hours last night and it's done VERY well so far today. About to hit 4 hours of usage and 8.5 hours of usage and still have 54% left. And I haven't listened to any music today. That's just straight texting, phone calls, browsing the web, twitter, facebook, etc. I've done 2 full power cycles in the time I've had this phone (from 100% battery to 0%) and still could only manage 9 hours of standby and 3-4 hours of usage, so the fact that I'm already at almost 8.5 hours of usage with 4 hours of standby and still have 54% battery left is awesome.

If this battery life keeps up throughout the week, I'm gonna love this phone.

Good luck finding out the issue! Very interesting topic.

Well, I guess I made the mistake of restarting my phone. I've restarted it like 10 times in the last 2 days. I decided to restart it tonight and now my cpu is back to normal. I'm regretting the decision because I would have been interested in what was running and why. So, now i'll keep Xcode downloading and continue to monitor my phone. I even compared my iphone 5 to another iphone 5 in the same location/network, mine was at 85% the other was at 2%
 

rritterson

macrumors 6502
Jul 10, 2008
357
1
DC USA
You have a corrupted app, system or otherwise, and things will run fine until you run that app again, after which the process will hang/crash and run up the CPU again. This happened to me once on my old 3G. I wasn't smart enough to know Xcode could monitor the phone, so I tried restoring it from backup. Turned out the corrupt files were in the backup too. Only restoring as a new phone solved the problem.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
You have a corrupted app, system or otherwise, and things will run fine until you run that app again, after which the process will hang/crash and run up the CPU again. This happened to me once on my old 3G. I wasn't smart enough to know Xcode could monitor the phone, so I tried restoring it from backup. Turned out the corrupt files were in the backup too. Only restoring as a new phone solved the problem.

Yeah, that would be my guess to. I'm looking forward to tomorrow see what kind of battery life I get if this problem doesn't start back up. I'm going to limit the apps I use for a day and see where it gets me.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
You have a corrupted app, system or otherwise, and things will run fine until you run that app again, after which the process will hang/crash and run up the CPU again. This happened to me once on my old 3G. I wasn't smart enough to know Xcode could monitor the phone, so I tried restoring it from backup. Turned out the corrupt files were in the backup too. Only restoring as a new phone solved the problem.

Mine was getting bad battery life the first couple days, but I left it on the charger for almost 12 hours last night and it's done VERY well so far today. About to hit 4 hours of usage and 8.5 hours of usage and still have 54% left. And I haven't listened to any music today. That's just straight texting, phone calls, browsing the web, twitter, facebook, etc. I've done 2 full power cycles in the time I've had this phone (from 100% battery to 0%) and still could only manage 9 hours of standby and 3-4 hours of usage, so the fact that I'm already at almost 8.5 hours of usage with 4 hours of standby and still have 54% battery left is awesome.

If this battery life keeps up throughout the week, I'm gonna love this phone.

Good luck finding out the issue! Very interesting topic.

Well I narrowed it down to Safari. I'm going to have to do a fresh install and hope that it fixes it. I was able to check xcode and the process was webbookmarksd. From what I can tell, it starts up as soon as I run safari and won't quit until I completely close safari and reboot my phone. Here is a screen shot of the xcode instruments app that shows the process and cpu usage. I've since found a few other articles online about this process, but no one has come back with a fix that I've heard of yet. I'll keep looking a little longer and if I don't see anything I'll restore it and add everything new again. This has been frustrating to say the least.
 

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diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
I've now narrowed it down to reading list. I rarely if ever use it, but I went into it on my iPhone and there were 4 bookmarks that said waiting below them. I can't delete them until the syncing is complete which isn't happening. I deleted them from my Safari on my mac but that hasn't stopped it.
 

rritterson

macrumors 6502
Jul 10, 2008
357
1
DC USA
Cool forensic analysis. Sounds like corrupt iCloud data is confusing the Safari child process. What if you disable iCloud on the phone and then re-enable it? It ought to remove the pending sync and start from scratch.
 

pragmatous

macrumors 65816
May 23, 2012
1,378
99
This is very fascinating please keep us updated.

I've now narrowed it down to reading list. I rarely if ever use it, but I went into it on my iPhone and there were 4 bookmarks that said waiting below them. I can't delete them until the syncing is complete which isn't happening. I deleted them from my Safari on my mac but that hasn't stopped it.
 

MBHockey

macrumors 601
Oct 4, 2003
4,050
297
Connecticut
I've now narrowed it down to reading list. I rarely if ever use it, but I went into it on my iPhone and there were 4 bookmarks that said waiting below them. I can't delete them until the syncing is complete which isn't happening. I deleted them from my Safari on my mac but that hasn't stopped it.

Cool forensic analysis. Sounds like corrupt iCloud data is confusing the Safari child process. What if you disable iCloud on the phone and then re-enable it? It ought to remove the pending sync and start from scratch.

Anecdotally, I am having significantly better battery life today than I have since getting it Friday. Last night I shut off a few things in iCloud, and safari was one of those things. After reading this thread I reenabled it and had a ton of stuff in the reading list. I deleted everything in the reading list (I don't use this feature really) and left the iCloud setting On for safari. So far so good.
 

dach2k3

macrumors member
Jul 11, 2008
85
0
hmm, i have been having battery life issues as well. I checked and I had 2 reader items syncing. I disabled Safari from iCloud and deleted all the items i had on Reader.

We'll see if it helps.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
hmm, i have been having battery life issues as well. I checked and I had 2 reader items syncing. I disabled Safari from iCloud and deleted all the items i had on Reader.

We'll see if it helps.

Yeah, mine says "waiting..." below the bookmark in the reader list. I'm unable to delete them. Here is what I tried:

Deleted reader list bookmarks from computer
Turned off iCloud, powered off iphone, turned on, went into safari and tried to delete it.
Turned off safari syncing in the icloud settings
Went into airplane mode
Sync with computer

None of those worked.

Last step is downloading the iOS 6 and performing a restore to factory settings. I'll setup everything like a new phone and see where it gets me.
 

MBHockey

macrumors 601
Oct 4, 2003
4,050
297
Connecticut
Yeah, mine says "waiting..." below the bookmark in the reader list. I'm unable to delete them. Here is what I tried:

Deleted reader list bookmarks from computer
Turned off iCloud, powered off iphone, turned on, went into safari and tried to delete it.
Turned off safari syncing in the icloud settings
Went into airplane mode
Sync with computer

None of those worked.

Last step is downloading the iOS 6 and performing a restore to factory settings. I'll setup everything like a new phone and see where it gets me.

I started with iPhone 5 as a new phone, so I'm really hoping this safari/iCloud thing is the answer to my awful battery. wifi on, Bluetooth off, a bit less than 50% brightness, and constantly 1-2 bars of 4g (no LTE right now, but that will change Friday when I get back to NYC).

so far it seems so. First day since turning off safari for icloud I'm at 67% with 5 hours 4 min of usage, 18 hours 25 min standby. usage has been email/surfing/iMessage/emails but no iPod use. Previously my iPhone wasn't even lasting until 4 pm from 8 am before turning itself off.

I also turned off iTunes Match, though. So that's a possible confounder.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
Here is a similar thread about this same issue on Apple's support forum. https://discussions.apple.com/message/19634442#19634442

I came across that thread earlier today when I was looking into the problem. I wonder what causes it for some and not others.

for notification


This is very fascinating please keep us updated.

So far so good. 51 min of usage, 2 hrs of stand by time and I'm at 97%. Hopefully it lasts and the problem doesn't come back. I've been home and in wifi range most of the day so it isn't a normal day, tomorrow I'll see what I can get out of it and report back.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
To say the least, my battery life has improved immensely. Before my battery would be around 15-20% remaining.
 

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Geckotek

macrumors G3
Jul 22, 2008
8,767
308
NYC
Well, I guess I made the mistake of restarting my phone. I've restarted it like 10 times in the last 2 days. I decided to restart it tonight and now my cpu is back to normal. I'm regretting the decision because I would have been interested in what was running and why. So, now i'll keep Xcode downloading and continue to monitor my phone. I even compared my iphone 5 to another iphone 5 in the same location/network, mine was at 85% the other was at 2%

This happened to my 4 or 4S a while back. After several restarts it finally corrected itself. Never figured out what caused it.
 

SR71

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2011
1,602
365
Boston, MA
To say the least, my battery life has improved immensely. Before my battery would be around 15-20% remaining.

Wow! Incredible battery life right there! Did you have LTE on all day? What about location services or wifi or bluetooth?

I'm at a little more than 3 hours of usage with about 9.5 hours of standby and I'm at 19%. I've had LTE on all day along with location services and wifi, but bluetooth is off and I've been in a low reception area (my school) for the past 6.5 hours. Checked if there were any rogue processes using the Instruments app in Xcode and nothing unusual showed up. Nonetheless, I'll be doing a restore to see if this will aid in fixing the problem.

After you restored did you restore your iPhone from an iCloud Backup or did you set it up as new and then redownload all of your apps? I'd prefer not to have to re-install all of my apps as I've got 74 apps on my phone. Thanks in advance! Great thread.
 

SR71

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2011
1,602
365
Boston, MA
Just did a full backup on iTunes of my iPhone 5 and then downloaded iOS 6 and restored my iPhone 5 and then loaded up my backup. We'll see how things go now... I'll report back later with my results.
 

SR71

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2011
1,602
365
Boston, MA
To say the least, my battery life has improved immensely. Before my battery would be around 15-20% remaining.

After fully restoring my phone, setting it up as new and then resyncing my iPhone with iTunes and adding my iCloud account, this is my best battery life so far! This is awesome! It was literally HARD for me to run this down to 1%. I had to genuinely try. I took this off the charger last night at 2:35AM (or around there) and it just hit 1% at 1:11AM the next day! Almost a full 24 hours of standby with over 6 hours of usage such as games, YouTube videos, browsing, downloading apps, Facebook, twitter, phone calls, texting... The whole bit and this 6+ hours of usage was with NO MUSIC PLAYING. My previous beat battery life was 9 hours standby with 4 hours of usage. This battery life is incredible. And this is with LTE and wifi always on, Bluetooth off, location services on for many apps, and push email on with one email account. Simply incredible battery life, and, not to mention, my black/slate iPhone 5 has no defects such as nicks, scuffs, scratches, etc.
 

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diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
After fully restoring my phone, setting it up as new and then resyncing my iPhone with iTunes and adding my iCloud account, this is my best battery life so far! This is awesome! It was literally HARD for me to run this down to 1%. I had to genuinely try. I took this off the charger last night at 2:35AM (or around there) and it just hit 1% at 1:11AM the next day! Almost a full 24 hours of standby with over 6 hours of usage such as games, YouTube videos, browsing, downloading apps, Facebook, twitter, phone calls, texting... The whole bit and this 6+ hours of usage was with NO MUSIC PLAYING. My previous beat battery life was 9 hours standby with 4 hours of usage. This battery life is incredible. And this is with LTE and wifi always on, Bluetooth off, location services on for many apps, and push email on with one email account. Simply incredible battery life, and, not to mention, my black/slate iPhone 5 has no defects such as nicks, scuffs, scratches, etc.

Good to hear. I wish some people would look into fixing their battery life issues as much as they spend complaining about them on the board. I'm 100% satisfied with my battery life now and am loving the new phone. It's well worth the upgrade from the 4.

Here is mine. It was light usage for most of the day in wifi range.
 

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SR71

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2011
1,602
365
Boston, MA
Good to hear. I wish some people would look into fixing their battery life issues as much as they spend complaining about them on the board. I'm 100% satisfied with my battery life now and am loving the new phone. It's well worth the upgrade from the 4.

Here is mine. It was light usage for most of the day in wifi range.

Agreed. This battery life is miles better than my iPhone 4.
 
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